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Bangkok Airport Protests Threaten Thai Economy

BANGKOK — Antigovernment protests that intensified last week with the takeover of the capital's two airports have plunged Thailand into its worst national crisis in at least a decade, and might severely damage the country's economy.
The blockades have hurt some of the country's crucial industries, especially tourism, at a time when the Thai economy was already showing signs of a slowdown because of the global financial crisis.

The standoff also carries the potential for violence. A grenade fired Tuesday into the crowds at the city's domestic airport, Don Muang, killed one protester and injured 22, Reuters reported.

There is also concern about violence between demonstrators and the police. There are more than 2,000 security troops on standby around the main international airport, but the police maintain that their priority is negotiation. A police helicopter flew over the main airport on Monday and dropped leaflets asking the thousands of protesters to "rally in peace and without weapons."

Since Bangkok is also a major regional hub for passengers and cargo traffic, the repercussions are also spreading through Asia. Logistics companies and airlines are diverting business to competing hubs in Singapore; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and Hong Kong.

Foreign governments, including that of the United States, have called on the protesters, who seek the resignation of Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat, to allow the airports to re-open. On Monday, after a concession by the protesters, airlines were flying dozens of empty planes out of the besieged international airport here, Thailand's main tourist gateway. Some of the planes were making stops elsewhere in the country, said Serirat Prasutanont, director of the Airports Authority of Thailand, to help funnel out some of the quarter-million or more foreign visitors still stranded.

The government has been using another airport, U-Tapao, at a Vietnam War-era military base two hours from Bangkok, to fly stranded passengers out. But that airport's facilities are overloaded, and in any case, extremely limited. It has no passenger check-in area, nor baggage-handling automation.

Thailand has two other international airports, at opposite ends of the country. One, in Chiang Mai, is an eight-hour drive north of Bangkok, and the other, on the resort island of Phuket, is nine hours to the south. But only departing flights are full.

"At the moment there are hardly any incoming passengers, very few," said Pornthip Hiranyakij, secretary general of the Tourism Council of Thailand. "I've been in the travel industry for 30 years and I've never seen it as bad as this."

On Monday, the rating agency Standard & Poor's lowered its economic outlook for Thailand because of the blockades. "It has caused serious disruptions to economic activities in the kingdom and raises the possibility of widespread violence markedly," said Kim Eng Tan, a credit analyst. "These developments will add to the negative pressures of a global slowdown on Thailand's economy."

The international airport, Suvarnabhumi, usually handles 100,000 passengers a day and more than one-quarter of a million commercial flights a year to 68 countries, along with 1,209,720 tons of freight, or about 3 percent of the world's total.

Thai Airways, which usually accounts for more than a quarter of the flights in and out of Suvarnabhumi, put the daily cost of the standstill at more than $14 million. Regional airlines, like the low-cost AirAsia, have canceled hundreds of flights, and Western airlines have canceled or cut back their flights, too.

Siriporn Manoharn, the governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, said the airport closings had created the worst crisis in the country's tourism industry since the nation was created five decades ago from the former Siam. "Even the tsunami was over in just one day," she told the newspaper Thai Rath.

A large sign erected near a popular beach in Phuket, said: "Save the nation, save tourism. Please stop shutting down the airports. - The people of Phuket."

The international airport was taken over last Tuesday, and the older, mostly domestic airport, Don Muang, on Thursday. The protesters called the moves the "final push" after three years of intermittent protests.

The antigovernment forces - a loose coalition of royalists, academics and members of the urban elite - are seeking to purge Thailand of politicians loyal to Thaksin Shinawatra, the business tycoon who was ousted as prime minister in a coup two years ago. Mr. Thaksin, who built his base among the rural poor, frightened many members of the Thai elite by centralizing power to an unprecedented degree during his six years in power, intimidating the news media and mixing his personal business interests with those of the government.

Imports have also been halted by the blockades, but since Thailand is largely agriculturally self-sustaining, scarcities are clustered among the luxuries of the globalized economy, delicacies consumed mainly by the Thai elite and foreigners. However, such things are important for a country that sells itself as a haven of pampering, relaxation and great restaurants.

The Four Seasons, one of the dozens of luxury hotels in Bangkok, has taken French oysters and artichokes off the menu, and its cache of fine wines is shrinking. Food distributors and supermarkets are reporting shortages of fruits and vegetables imported from more temperate climates - strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, cauliflower, celery, spinach and avocados - as well as yogurt, cheeses and other dairy products imported from New Zealand, Australia and Europe.

Bangkok's many Japanese restaurants have been particularly hard hit because of their reliance on fresh imported fish.

But a few foods have made it in. A container bound for Bangkok, filled with fish, French cheeses, foie gras, many types of berries and a large white truffle worth $4,000, was stranded at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris last week, according to Nuntiya Hameunggull, general manager of Gourmet Onewww.gourmet-one.com/ Gourmet One's Web site, a food distributor. As the crisis dragged on, the items were sold off in France - except for the truffle, which was destined for a party in Bangkok next Sunday Dec. 7.

Taking in reverse a route being used to get a few electronics exports out of Thailand, the truffle was flown to Malaysia and then driven through the Malay Peninsula and all the way to Bangkok, a distance of 930 miles.